The Man Behind The Mic

Mike Ham won’t tell you he changed the game. He’ll tell you he just wanted to talk to people.

He’ll downplay the podcast. Shrug off the radio station. Act like Jersey Fest wasn’t a cultural reset in the making.

But that’s exactly what makes Mike…Mike!

He’s not some self-proclaimed visionary trying to brand his way into legacy. He is the legacy, because he lives it - quietly, relentlessly, without asking for flowers.

Back in 2020, he was in real estate - lunches, meetups, handshakes. Then the pandemic pulled the plug, and like every good Jersey hustler, Mike pivoted. Not to “go viral.” Not to chase clout. To stay connected.

It started small. A LinkedIn video series. Then a podcast (The Morning Spotlight) talking shop with other professionals. But the more he recorded, the more he realized the episodes that stuck weren’t about business.

They were about people. Grit. Roots. Soul.

That’s when he knew.

The stories that mattered weren’t in boardrooms. They were in dive bars, bakeries, nonprofits, tattoo shops, and basements. Places you don’t get invited to unless you show up with respect and stay long enough to listen.

So he did.

October 2021, Greetings From the Garden State launched. No studio, no sponsors. Just Mike and a mic going directly to the source (literally, he would go TO them physically).

Grassroots by necessity, grounded by nature. Maybe that’s why it worked.

Mike doesn’t pretend to be anything but himself.

He’ll sit with Olympians, James Beard nominees, food icons, and punk rockers and still treat them like neighbors. He is the culture he’s documenting. Not above it. Not separate from it. He’s the embodiment of everything his platforms stand for: real, local, humble, loud with love.

By episode seven, he knew it was bigger than him.

But to this day, ask him what he’s built?

He’ll just laugh, shrug, and say he’s “talking to cool people.”

As if cool people are lining up for interviews just to hang with anyone. Nah.

They come for Mike because Mike came for them first.

The Birth Of Greetings From The Garden State

Mike Ham grew a podcast from the ground up.

No blueprint. No hype campaign. Just a question:

What if we met people where they were and actually listened?

He ditched the desk and hit the streets. Literally.

I didn’t have the money for a studio. So I figured out how to meet people where they’re at. That was at their places.

He bought a portable mic setup, packed his car, and started showing up at diners, distilleries, food trucks, boardwalks, nonprofits, tattoo shops - you name it.

Wherever there was a story, Mike pulled up. Not as press, but a person.

That’s how Greetings From the Garden State was born:

Out of an instinct that maybe the most powerful voices weren’t the loudest - just the most overlooked.

And it worked.

In the first handful of episodes, he sat with a painter. A brewer. A business owner fighting to stay open. He heard laughter, struggle, roots, rage, resilience.

It didn’t feel like content. It felt like community.

There were no frills. No posturing. Just people telling the truth in their own words, on their own terms, through the voice of someone who didn’t talk over them, he amplified them.

And slowly but surely, episode by episode, Mike built more than a podcast.

He built a living record of the Garden State’s soul.

It wasn’t about marketing a place. It was about memorializing it while it’s still alive and weird and beautiful and changing too fast to catch.

The Evolution: Radio Garden State

Sometimes rock bottom is a launchpad.

In October 2023, Mike Ham got laid off from his full-time job and instead of scrambling to play it safe, he looked at everything he had built - the interviews, the relationships, the raw momentum of Greetings From the Garden State.

We just went for it. No more half-in. We were ready to bet on ourselves.

That gamble turned into a full-blown frequency.

On July 1, 2024, Radio Garden State went live.

It was a revolution in format - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week of pure, unfiltered, Jersey-rooted storytelling, sound, and soul.

Where Greetings was intimate, episodic, and grounded in the one-on-one, Radio Garden State is a living, breathing, statewide amplifier. A platform for local bands. Small business shoutouts. Community bulletins.

Podcast episodes come out once a week. We wanted something that took what we were doing and blew it out - something that let us do more, 24/7.

And more is exactly what they did.

Since launch, RGS has spotlighted underground bands, homegrown businesses, hometown heroes, and those weird little slices of New Jersey culture that are too specific for mainstream radio but too important to ignore.

Mike didn’t start a radio station to make noise.

He made it to hold space for artists. For underdogs. For people who never thought their stories were “radio-worthy.”

He built it for us.

We’ll always be rooted in people’s stories. That’s never changing.

The Method, The Mic, And The Man

Let’s get one thing straight: Mike Ham is a storyteller, not a showman.

No entourage. No ego. No media machine spinning the wheels behind the scenes. Just Mike, his gut, and a mic.

Podcasters are storytellers, but if you have a guest, you need to get them to tell their story. You’re there to guide.

And that’s what he does best, he guides. He shows up, listens, then finds the thread and lets it unravel on its own. There are no pre-written questions. No stiff intros. Just two people, a conversation, and a beat of trust.

I really want the guest to feel like we’re just hanging out at a coffee shop or on a barstool. Forget the mics. Forget the cameras. Just be present.

That’s why his interviews don’t feel like interviews.

They feel like moments. They breathe. They live. They last.

Mike does the homework. He preps, he cares, but once the mic is on, it’s all about instinct and flow - a dance between structure and soul.

And what keeps it real? Mike himself.

You’d think someone who’s been featured in NJ Monthly, Jersey’s Best, the NJ Morning Show, and who’s built a radio station from the ground up might flex a little. But nope.

That’s because it is grassroots. I run a small business in New Jersey just like many of my guests do.

He still drives hours to meet guests face to face. Still packs his own gear. Still sends thank-you texts - not as strategy, but as human decency.

As soon as we start to lose sight of what made us successful, it’s over. We’re not a big media company. It’s me.

And it’s that same grounded, no-bullshit energy that shapes his guest list.

There’s no fame-chasing. No viral bait. No industry name-dropping just to boost numbers. You’ll find Olympic athletes and Jersey icons side-by-side with small-town bakers, nonprofit founders, and people who never thought anyone would hand them a mic.

To Mike, it’s never about the name. It’s about the story.

At this point, I think I just have a feel for what makes a good guest.

It’s a sixth sense - an ability to spot the spark, the struggle, the weird little truth buried behind someone’s eyes. And when he feels it? He hands them the mic.

Some guests come through referrals - past guests saying, “Trust me, Mike gets it. He’s one of us.” Others he finds mid-convo in some random corner of the state, just being present.

He’s chopped it up with Eric LeGrand, whose spinal cord injury turned him into a national symbol of grit. He’s sat across from Ken Daneyko, Devils legend and Jersey hockey soul. He’s stepped inside sacred spaces like Rutt’s Hut, Donkey’s Place, Tony’s Baltimore Grill, and The Great Notch Inn - places that feel like New Jersey folklore.

These stories don’t just exist in podcast archives.

They become part of New Jersey’s shared memory.

And that’s what makes it powerful.

What He's Learned About Jersey

You can’t drive the entire state, town to town, story to story, and not be changed by it.

Mike Ham has talked to nearly 200 people on the record and through all that noise and nuance, one thing keeps hitting him over the head: New Jersey is a damn miracle.

I always knew this, but maybe didn’t see it or live it enough. New Jersey is super accessible. You can get anywhere and experience totally different parts of the state in a single day.

It’s true. One tank of gas can take you from a neon-lit boardwalk to a forest trail to a Peruvian bakery to a punk show in a basement.

Few places can say that. Even fewer can pull it off without losing their identity. And the people? Forget the stereotypes. Forget the Snooki jokes. Forget the Joisey punchlines. Forget the idea that New Jersey is just the greasy rest stop between New York and Philly.

We’re not a pit stop. We’re a pulse.

We’ve got one of the most diverse populations in the country. We’ve got flavor, language, rhythm, resistance. We’ve got whole communities that are building culture from scratch in real time and most of them don’t even have a platform to stand on.

There’s just so much here. So many ways of life, so much history, so many people creating something that only exists here.

What he’s building with Greetings From the Garden State and Radio Garden State isn’t just about preserving what’s already legendary. It’s about spotlighting what will be.

The future Jersey icons. The next Weird NJ. The band no one knows yet. The restaurant that’s about to blow up. The person working a second job while building something sacred after hours.

This isn’t nostalgia. It’s foresight.

And Mike is documenting it all before it disappears.

Mike's Personal Jersey Map

For someone who spends most of his time documenting other people’s stories, it takes a minute to get Mike Ham talking about his own.

Ask him what part of Jersey feels like “home,” and you won’t get a single answer.

You’ll get five. Minimum. All of them drenched in memory, music, food, and late-night chaos.

I don’t have enough space to write down all the food and places I love, but I’ll keep it to five.

So here it is: Mike Ham’s Garden State GPS

🥇 Rutt’s Hut (Clifton)

A Rutt’s Hut ripper. No question.

Not a recommendation. A requirement.

This is Mike’s holy site of fried hot dog excellence. Crispy and iconic.

🍺 The Great Notch Inn (Woodland Park)

A cold beer while listening to a live band.

It’s not a venue. It’s a vibe. One of those places where time bends and the stories write themselves in the sweat between guitar solos.

🎰 Tony’s Baltimore Grill (Atlantic City)

Any time I’m at Tony’s."

Pizza at 3AM. Grit in the air. Rumbling jukebox.

🥪 Taylor Ham, Egg & Cheese w/ SPK

Specifically the morning after hitting the dive bars.

Hangover cure. Love language. Cultural cornerstone. Mike is team Taylor Ham, and he’s not afraid to say it with his chest.

🌊 Asbury Park

I always feel at home when we visit there.

The boardwalk. The ocean air laced with punk history.

These aren’t Yelp reviews. These are chapters in Mike’s life.

They’ve shaped him, held him, reminded him why he does what he does and why this state will never be “just a job” to him.

Because Mike doesn’t just talk about New Jersey. He is stitched into it.

Protecting The Culture

Mike Ham will never call himself the voice of New Jersey, but when he talks, you hear it.

Not just his voice, but the echo of all the stories he’s collected. The people he’s amplified. The state he’s been crisscrossing like a man on a mission.

I don’t feel pressure to represent Jersey culture. I just think if we continue to do what we do and be ourselves, that is Jersey culture.

That sentence right there? That’s the manifesto.

Mike isn’t documenting New Jersey to freeze it in time.

He’s doing it to protect what makes it worth remembering in the first place.

He knows things are changing. Fast. Towns getting gutted and gentrified. Local businesses disappearing. Chain stores replacing character. Entire communities being priced out of the very spaces they built.

And if someone doesn’t record the soul of this place now? It’s gone.

We need to take better care of what makes New Jersey special.That responsibility starts in Trenton, but it lives with all of us - every day.

This isn’t about clout or content. This is about preservation through participation.

Mike isn’t trying to go viral. He’s trying to make sure the kid running a pop-up bakery in Newark gets heard. He’s trying to document the bar in South Jersey that’s been open since 1952 and still only takes cash. He’s trying to create a stage for the next punk band from Passaic, the next chef in Paterson, the next nonprofit founder in Camden who has no budget but won’t stop building.

He’s not asking New Jersey to be proud. He’s reminding us we already should be.

Support local businesses. Support local art. Show up in your community. Not because it’s trendy - but because if we don’t protect what makes New Jersey New Jersey, it disappears. And once it’s gone, it won’t come back.

That’s what Mike Ham’s building. A fucking time capsule.

And when the dust settles and the skyline shifts? The music, the voices, the soul of this state will still be echoing.

Because Mike was there.

And he hit record.

JERSEY FEST: The Movement Made Physical

MAY 17, 2025

WHITE EAGLE HALL, JERSEY CITY

You can only stay behind the mic for so long before the energy spills out into the real world.

And for Mike Ham, that eruption looks like this:

Jersey Fest.

This is the real-life manifestation of everything Mike’s built - episode by episode, guest by guest, late-night edit by early-morning drive.

It’s our culmination event. Sort of our Wrestlemania.

And he means it.

Jersey Fest started with humble bones - just a guy throwing community meetups in a brewery.

But in May 2024, it leveled up.

Live bands. Local food icons. Full-house crowd.

The proof that Radio Garden State had grown roots deep enough to throw a party the whole state wanted to crash.

This year? They’re doing it again. Bigger. Louder. Hungrier.

Here’s what’s going down on May 17, 2025:

🎸 THE SOUND:

Emerson Woolf and the Wishbones
Connor Bracken & The Mother Leeds Band
Reality Suite
Live sets designed to shake the walls and remind you why Jersey still produces the best bands in the damn country.

🌭 THE FLAVOR:

Rutt’s Hut - yes, the Rippers are on-site
Craft beer, Jersey spirits, and enough attitude to power a small city

🌀 THE CHAOS:

DJ April spinning the after-vibe
Johnny Pork Roll - the name, the myth, the local legend
John Cozz, Creatures of Chrome, and one of the Marks from Weird NJ (because of course)
Stories, sound, sweat, and serendipity all smashed into one night

A stage for the people who are New Jersey.

We want people to walk out feeling like they got a little taste of what NJ is all about and then go out and seek more of it.

If you want to understand what Mike Ham stands for, don’t ask him.

Show up on May 17th.

Stand in that crowd. Feel the bassline in your ribcage. Take a bite of a ripper with their infamous relish still on your face. And know you are exactly where you’re supposed to be.